As Mayor Greg Fischer often says, Louisville must have a skilled workforce if we want to be competitive in a 21st-century economy. We need at least 50 percent of working-age adults to have an associate’s degree or higher. We cannot do that – not fast enough – simply by enrolling more high school seniors in college. We must also find ways to help adults – people with jobs, child-care challenges and mortgages – go back to school.

Today, the Mayor and KentuckianaWorks are announcing a new effort to help -- an employer-based college-coaching program called Degrees Work.

The program gives employers a convenient, affordable way to provide a life-changing benefit to employees. They contract with KentuckianaWorks to give their workers access to trained college coaches who can help navigate degree possibilities at seven Louisville-area colleges and universities.

These college coaches will help employees figure out which degree programs best match their goals and schedules. Perhaps more importantly, the coaches will be able to help adult learners explore the possibility of getting college credit for relevant life experience and to transfer prior college credits. They can also advise on important special obstacles that face some adult workers – including college debt from earlier enrollments that got interrupted.

For employers, this is a benefit that will encourage worker loyalty, help retention and create a way to grow their workforce from proven employees. For employees, this is a ticket to more skills, higher wages and improved employability.

Humana, Universal Woods, and Louisville Metro Government are the first three Degrees Work employers.

For seven years now, 55,000 Degrees – Louisville’s education movement – has been working with groups throughout Louisville to move us toward our community’s higher education goals. We knew, from the beginning, that college-coaching for adult learners must be a part of that. In fact, GLI, with funds from Lumina Foundation, helped incubate early versions of Degrees Work. KentuckianaWorks has developed those initial efforts into a sustainable program that will provide maximum benefit to employers and employees.

In Louisville, we are making progress toward our 55,000 Degree goals. In 2015, the percentage of working-age adults with at least an associate degree was 44.7 percent, up 3 percentage points over the previous year and a new high for our community. And the greatest growth has been in the 35-44 age group!

But to reach our 50 percent goal by 2020, we must push harder. That’s how we will best ensure our community and individual families can thrive.

Everyone understands that it can be hard to find time and money for college when you’re working and/or raising a family. But it’s also true that adult workers have tremendous advantages when it comes to going to school. Adult workers usually have:

the discipline and maturity it takes to succeed at school

heightened motivation to succeed

Better defined career goals and a better understanding of how education can help further those goals.

In fact, the very obstacles that adult workers face can sometimes be their biggest motivations. Money may be tight – but adults know that a college degree will increase their earning power. Returning to school isn’t easy when raising children, but the rewards for a family can be great, as a degree can open the door to more job opportunities, a better paycheck and a stronger future.

Degrees do in fact “work” for adult learners, employers and our community.